ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions Homepage
Forum Home Forum Home > ProductCart > Using ProductCart
  New Posts New Posts RSS Feed - Automation Questions
  FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Events   Register Register  Login Login

Automation Questions

 Post Reply Post Reply
Author
Message
chris_b View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie


Joined: 30-June-2006
Status: Offline
Points: 0
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote chris_b Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Automation Questions
    Posted: 30-July-2008 at 9:06pm

I have a question about automation.

I have seen stores with 20,000 to 40,000 products in them and the distributor offers a data feed with updates on the prices and new products. I am considering setting up an account with them and opening a new store.

1) How would you pull the information into your cart that the distributor has available so that prices would get updated and new products added?

 
Chris
Back to Top
Greg Dinger View Drop Down
Certified ProductCart Developers
Certified ProductCart Developers
Avatar

Joined: 23-September-2006
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 238
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Greg Dinger Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-July-2008 at 9:24pm
I have a client running a different cart, but he has a distributor that does have a data feed that identifies available products as well as price changes.
 
We wrote a script that when pointed at this price change feed will identify the before/after values.  That script could just as easily (and will eventually for that client) write the results to a file that can be processed as an update against the product database.
 
So let's say this script is altered to identify which are new products, and which are price changes, that it outputs either a single XLS (Or a pair at your preference) which would be formatted according to the needs of the product import tool.
 
And since you regularly use that tool, you know just what to do next - upload and post against either of your stores.
 
There will be some performance issues, of course, in terms of dealing with such a large file, but I've already stress tested the current script with at least 5000 records in the download from the distributor and it played just fine.
Back to Top
ProductCart View Drop Down
Admin Group
Admin Group

ProductCart Team

Joined: 01-October-2003
Status: Offline
Points: 135
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote ProductCart Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-July-2008 at 9:24pm
Hi Chris, you would probably want to look at using the XML Tools:

http://www.earlyimpact.com/productcart/xml/

The tools allow a third party to update information in the ProductCart database without user interaction.

If you business partner is not able to create an XML data feed that ProductCart can take in, then you would have to hire a developer to create an application in between that would take the data and re-format it.
The ProductCart Team

Home of ProductCart shopping cart software
Back to Top
chris_b View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie


Joined: 30-June-2006
Status: Offline
Points: 0
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote chris_b Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-July-2008 at 9:54pm
Thanks Greg, I will touchbase with you on this.
 
EI, two of the distributors that we buy from have the data feed in xml format.
 
I see a lot of people talking about it, but not a lot of information on the specifics of how it all works, especially fo those of us without any programming knowledge!
 
Chris
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply
  Share Topic   

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down

Forum Software by Web Wiz Forums® version 12.04
Copyright ©2001-2021 Web Wiz Ltd.

This page was generated in 0.063 seconds.